Buddhist Themes in The White Lotus, Explained | Josh Bearman

Dan deconstructs the Dharmic elements of the popular HBO show, with the co-host of The White Lotus Official Season 3 companion podcast. Joshuah Bearman is a writer and film producer in Los Angeles. He has written for Wired, GQ, Harper's, Rolling Stone, and contributed to This American Life. Along with Jia Tolentino, Josh is the co-host of the The White Lotus Official Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-white-lotus-official-podcast/id1789416962. In this episode we talk about: How Josh became interested in Buddhism How Mike White, the writer and creator of The White Lotus, became interested in Buddhism Buddhist concepts and themes all three seasons of The White Lotus Buddhist notions of self and identity Some paradoxes and pitfalls of Buddhism The perils of pleasure seeking Craving certainty as a bulwark against anxiety The importance of repetition  of simple Buddhist ideas that we are programmed to forget The Buddhist concept of attachment The three jewels of Buddhism and the importance of relationships Related Episodes: Natasha Rothwell (White Lotus, How To Die Alone) On: Loneliness, Envy, People Pleasing, And Finding Your "Hell Yes" https://www.danharris.com/p/the-white-lotuss-natasha-rothwell Michael Imperioli (From The Sopranos and White Lotus) Knows a Shitload About Buddhist Meditation https://www.danharris.com/p/michael-imperioli-from-the-sopranos-68b Holding it Together When Things Fall Apart | Pema Chödrön https://www.danharris.com/p/holding-it-together-when-things-fall-48c?r=33wgh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Pema Chödrön, Renowned Buddhist Nun, On Her One Non-Negotiable Happiness Strategy https://www.danharris.com/p/pema-chodron-renowned-buddhist-nun-610?r=33wgh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: The White Lotus Official Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-white-lotus-official-podcast/id1789416962

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hello, party people. How we doing? Today, we are going to deconstruct the Buddhist themes in the amazing HBO TV series, The White Lotus, Season Three. By my reckoning, there's never been a more popular work of art that I'm aware of that has dealt with Buddhist themes in such a rich and robust way. I mean, you can maybe look at The Matrix, but The Matrix, which came out many years ago, didn't deal with Buddhism head-on in the way The White Lotus did. And it's caused this huge conversation, which I think is so interesting and so fun for me, as somebody who loves the show and who loves the Dharma. So today, we're dropping a special episode. We usually don't drop episodes on Thursdays,

• 1:03Dan Harris?

  but we rushed this episode into the feed because we got so excited about it. Side note, I want to thank many people on the team who made this possible, including Marissa Schneiderman, our senior producer, and Caroline Keenan, another of our producers, and Abby Smith, who's another key member of the team. But there are many people who did a lot of hard work to get this episode ready for you. My guest is a guy I just met, who I feel like I could easily be friends with. I liked him immensely and immediately. Josh Bearman is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a producer. He is best known for writing long-form nonfiction. In fact, he wrote the story upon which the movie Argo was based. His work regularly appears in publications like Wired, Rolling Stone, Harper's, and the New York Times.

• 1:48Dan Harris?

  And most relevant for this episode is that he is the co-host of the White Lotus official Season Three companion podcast, along with another great writer, Jia Tolentino, who writes for The New Yorker, who sadly is not part of this episode, but I'm a big fan of hers. Anyway, Josh and I discuss a whole lot here. We talk about how Josh got interested in Buddhism. How Mike White, the creator and writer and director of the show, got into Buddhism. We talk about Buddhist concepts and themes that define season three of The White Lotus and also other seasons. We talk about Buddhist notions of self and identity, some of the paradoxes and pitfalls of Buddhism, the perils of seeking pleasure. We talk about

• 2:31Dan Harris?

  how we crave certainty as a bulwark against anxiety. We talk about the importance of repetition of simple Buddhist ideas that we are programmed to forget. We talk about the Buddhist concept of attachment and the three jewels of Buddhism and the importance of relationships. We'll get started with Josh Bearman right after this. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it

• 3:14Dan Harris?

  is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can

• 3:57Dan Harris?

  support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a- Great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously.

• 4:41Dan Harris?

  We'll be right back with more show. Josh Bearman, welcome to the show.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:48Dan Harris?

  I'm excited to have you.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Excited to chat.

• 4:50Dan Harris?

  Yeah. You and I share many mutual friends and also mutual obsessions, including the White Lotus and Buddhism. Before we get into the themes of the show, I'd be curious just to hear like, to what extent have you looked at Buddhism? Why is it interesting to you? Why, why did you spend so much time talking about it on, on your podcasts? A little backstory from you.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Sure. My Buddhist insight, such as it is, and my exposure, I guess, to Buddhism was really through my therapist who I had a therapist for about eight to 10 years, somewhere in there in my 40s. So this is my one stretch really with a therapist and she happened to be a Buddhist nun to such a degree that I don't actually know her real name. All I know her by is Anilat Tenzin Lhamo. And in fact, I never have seen her. I only talked to her on the phone. I was referred to her by a friend. She lived somewhere else. We spoke on the phone for 10 years. I often imagine that she was just sort of like a talking star, you know?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Or like, like a lotus flower, like speaking to me or something. So she was a clinical psychologist, but she also was, I don't know, 30, 40 years deep into Tibetan Buddhism, as I think is maybe obvious from her name. And so that informed, that kind of ran through the therapeutic process. And I mean, like Mike, Mike talks all about that. He sort of discovered Puma children, I think. I actually don't know who he, which kind of like Buddhist self-help books he came across. But I was also given some of those books and then I started talking to Tenzin Lama. And then I, this was all in the midst of kind of a personal crisis. And so that pulled me out of this nosedive.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And part of the ideas that were helpful in that were these. Basically, sort of like Krip notes versions of Buddhism. So it has sat with me and I see it in places, but I gotta say, I definitely really saw it to a strong degree in White Lotus, even season one, which is not explicitly about that. And then of course, in this season as well.

• 7:07Dan Harris?

  Just to say, Pema Trodrin is an eminent

• 7:11Dan Harris?

  Western Tibetan Buddhist nun who's been on the show a couple of times. I'll drop some links to my conversations with her in the show notes. She's pretty incredible. But you mentioned Mike and his connection to Buddhism. If memory serves, his story is not dissimilar to yours and also to mine, where he kind of hit the skids a little bit and got interested in Buddhism. How much do you know about his, his background with this stuff?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I only know what he, I mean, he's talked about it in interviews and I've talked about it with him a little bit. I know him from before White Lotus professionally and socially. And I knew he talked about it, I mean, years ago, when I first worked with him was like 12, 13, 14 years ago. So it was actually before I had any exposure to it. And I remember kind of that he had, there was some interest and thoughts about it, but it wasn't very explicit. It didn't come very much. Then I had sort of my whole encounter with it. And then now in the wake of White Lotus, it's become sort of part of the lore of his personal story. And we talked about it a little bit.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I interviewed him for the, for the official podcast and he didn't really say much more. And actually I didn't pry. He's kind of, you know, doesn't like to talk about his work that much, actually. So, so I was, I was treading a little bit carefully when I interviewed him, but it is very similar. I mean, fundamentally it's similar. I think he's had a rough time in his professionally and personally. And then it was in my case, somebody like handed me a copy of Start Where You Are. That was the first thing. And then, you know, it's like a classic, like read this, you know? And I think something similar had happened with him. And then I think it is also very similar in that he didn't become a serious practitioner. It was just that those ideas embedded themselves in his way of thinking about the world and his

• 9:01Speaker 01

  way of thinking about his art and craft and storytelling and so on.

• 9:06Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that all lands. And again, resonates with me, just given that I had a cocaine fueled panic attack on national television, and that's what got me interested in Buddhism. So many of us enter through the doorway of suffering, as they say in Buddhism.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:21Dan Harris?

  I want to dive into the show and the Buddhist themes in the show, but let me just kind of cop to something right from the jump, that you and I are two white dudes talking about another white dude's rendering of an eastern spiritual tradition on television. So, and also neither of us is a Buddhist scholar. I have written a few books about meditation in the Dharma and, you know, do a lot of retreats and, and do my best to study it, but I'm not a monk or a scholar. So with those caveats issued, you and I will muddle through some pretty interesting territory. Does that all sound fair to you?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  That does, yes. Yeah. I don't pretend to be an expert in any way.

• 10:03Dan Harris?

  Well, pretending is a big theme on the show.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 10:07Dan Harris?

  I identified seven themes that I want to talk to you. Maybe we'll see if we get through all of them, but seven things that really stuck out to me. And one of them really is this idea of pretending, or to be more precise about it, and to use the language of the show, the idea that identity is a prison. I was struck in your interview with Mike, that he said, in some ways, the whole season was an exploration, a dramatic exploration of this idea. And he kind of thought about the season as a, and these are his words, a Buddhist parable about, you know, identity as a source of pain. And he hits it, he hits the theme like right in the first episode,

• 10:48Dan Harris?

  where Piper is listening to a recorded talk from a Buddhist monk who says, and I'm going to quote here, "Identity is a prison. No one is spared this prison. Rich man, poor man, success or failure, we build the prison, lock ourselves inside, then throw away the key." Does that language land with you? Does it resonate?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, when I was watching the pilot, which I saw early because we were, you know, I was ahead of this whole process. I heard that and Piper was sitting there listening on her audiobook. And I knew instantly, okay, this is what the show is about. It's the textual leitmotif, right, of the show. And also I knew that he's interested in identity in general and is kind of opposed to the way that, like, looking at one's own identity has become a concretized, like, systematic way of thinking about the world, identitarianism, basically, politically. And so then here he goes at it emotionally, right? And so it's kind of an oblique way, it's a way to talk about it emotionally and then obliquely,

• 11:54Speaker 01

  sort of like the way identity is kind of reared its head in culture and politics. Yeah, I found it to be very powerful. I mean, it's, I love, you know, the language is so simple and straightforward. This is why it was impactful for me when I encountered it sort of in this therapeutic setting. And I found it similarly impactful here, especially at the opening, because then you're like, okay, well, we've met all the characters. They've all been introduced now. They have strong identities. That's what character is, right? So how are those identities going to be undone or subverted? Is anybody going to escape their identity? I listened to that several times, so I could remember specifically the wording because it is, it's very succinct and it kind of says it all.

• 12:36Dan Harris?

  And it, it, it was interesting for me to listen to you talking to Mike about this. And it seems like this theme really plays out perhaps most strongly with two characters. And Mike describes this. One is Tim Ratliff, the patriarch of the rich Southern family, who, as, as Mike describes it, you know, has lived his life carrying around huge expectations from his family and the community. And, you know, has become a pillar of the community. And then learns, you know, he's about to get arrested for something, or probably get arrested for something, and feels this terror at the idea of, in Mike's words here, having the mask ripped off.

• 13:18Dan Harris?

  So the identity plays out in one way with Tim and then in another way with, what's the name of Walt Goggins' character again?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Rick.

• 13:26Dan Harris?

  Rick. Who is so trapped in his identity as a victim, you know, of this early trauma of losing his father, so trapped in that trauma that he like can't see the love that's available to him like in the present moment. You know, I personally, I found it to be a quite effective, dramatic rendering of these ideas that can actually be like abstruse or esoteric.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that I think is kind of the main magic of the show of setting the taking this kind of format of White Lotus, which is essentially, you know, kind of a parlor drama and parlor dramas are sort of embedded in like this is like like social norms and you know, and these kinds of things. And in this case, and which is what you would season one is obviously, and season two in the sexual farce kind of mode. And then season three explicitly putting it in this backdrop of a country that is Buddhist and then that installment of the White Lotus Hotel as kind of like a commodified wellness version of Buddhism, right? Where people are meant to kind of have a quick, you know, epiphany or something.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  And in fact, they're all challenged extremely. So I found that to be very effective. You know, there's been a lot of everybody's like all a lot of chatter about the show and like, who dies and who doesn't. And to some degree, I think that's not actually the point. I think there are, it's sort of like an essay, you know, like a really great essay. You kind of can't really remember any of it. It's just like each line has a little kind of discovery in it. That's kind of how I felt watching the show. Of course, G and I had to like, examine the show in extreme analytical and thematic detail. So I feel very close to it as a text. So that's how I read it as this kind of rich text and with these characters against this backdrop of Buddhism.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  And so the outcome isn't really that important to me, which by the way, and this might be on your list too. The final voiceover from that same monk is about how we all want our story to have a resolution. And this itself is a source of suffering and there is no resolution. And so it's kind of funny that then there's all these people out on the internet like clamoring over the resolution and it was stated explicitly in there like the resolution is not actually that important.

• 15:55Dan Harris?

  Trust me, Dr. Bearman, I'm gonna get to that closing speech from the monk. But let me just stay for a second on this identity as a prison. I kinda wanna, if you'll humor me, I wanna kind of hold forth on it and then get your response to my blathering.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanna hear your thoughts. Yes, laid on me.

• 16:16Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:16Dan Harris?

  There's an easy way to understand this and a trickier way to understand this.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:22Dan Harris?

  The easy way to understand it is that if you're clinging to like a self-limiting story about who you are, I'm this kind of person, I'm that kind of person, I am, you know, I have X kindness quotient and Y patience quotient, like you're putting a ceiling on what you're capable of. And often when you're stuck in your own story, you're cut off from the rest of the world. And you're fighting with the fluid nature of reality. So being stuck in an identity, you know, closes your mind, it limits your ability to connect with other people, to respond wisely to other people.

• 17:03Dan Harris?

  As you mentioned, it also on a macro level when we're stuck in identities, you know, polarized political identities, it can have a warping effect on democracy. But like on the show, it's much more on a micro level and how we're all kind of performing a version of ourselves. And, you know, this is, I think, true for, you know, especially in the era of Instagram, you know, this curated persona version of ourselves as opposed to being real. That's one level. There's a deeper level I'll go to in a second, but, you know, does that all track for you?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. I mean, it tracks for me, you know, in my own life and I, to the degree that I, you know, have this kind of sense of Buddhism through my therapeutic experience, it also is a powerful idea. And then I feel like Play Down the Show was also a very powerful idea. I had, like I say, I don't know if you, I can't remember the degree to which this winds up in the podcast, but I had really seen this in season one, then I asked Mike about it and he was like, I'm not so sure, but I'm pretty convinced, actually. I rewatched season one and it is maybe an accident, but it is very clearly in there. The very first thing that Armand says when he's like waiting for the guest is, "Make yourself have no identity."

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Try to make yourself sort of like an exchangeable friendly faced widget of hospitality. And and basically, the whole time, he's trying to efface his identity. And then when Belinda lays Tanya down, she's like, let go of your story. Every day is a new day. It doesn't have to be like the day before. Those ideas just in those, then that was in a in a spa, right? So it's this kind of like wellness version of that idea. And then all the characters are suffering in their own various ways. And the story is all very sympathetic to every character, even though there's kind of a putative villain. And there are these extreme class differences and so on.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And the suffering is universal, except for the one character who basically escapes his identity, right? He like sees a whale and communes with the ocean. It's like, oh, what would happen if I just go like in the waves, right?

• 19:15Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  That's sort of the only way out. So that's that's it's in practice. It's like in this one, it's very explicit because there's this narrative and you've got Piper seeking these things. And then you've got these almost allegorical figures like Rick, who are archetypes of like somebody who has no doesn't know how to love or be loved and is empty and is nothing. But you see this all the way through. And in season one, the other person who gets off the wheel is Armand because he dies. Which I thought that those two examples were very illustrative of this very same idea of identity as a prison. And so then now to see it kind of laid out explicitly, I thought was illuminating in a whole different way. Because everybody's encountering that idea on on its face.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  In season one, it's sort of like it's tacit. And in this one, it's, you know, it's the program.

• 20:07Dan Harris?

  I love that analysis of season one. I actually, just before I started this interview with you, decided to go back and and watch season one yet again. I was just a couple of minutes into it when I realized I needed to get my shit together for this.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 20:23Dan Harris?

  It is great. It really is. Okay, but but I do want to add that there is this, you know, in Buddhism, there's a deeper and more mysterious and brain breaking assertion here around the self, which is that the self is an illusion. Many people find that confusing. Have you bumped up against that and wrestled with it at all?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I have in in these kind of long conversations in my in therapy, not so I mean, and in some reading, right? And I've thought about it in my own life, you know? I mean, there's sort of like this constant war, right? Like, uh, ourselves and everything else, basically. And, I mean, also, I've encountered this. You can come to that notion via like post structuralism, postmodernism and Derrida, where like everybody is a position in a web of language, right? There's like other ways, there's neurological ways to arrive at that. Well, it's just a bunch of like nerve tissue and electrical impulses.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things that point towards that idea and how accepting that idea is ironically like a way of self-care. Accepting that you have no self is like self-care, uh, because the self and the needs of the self and the demands and the expectations, all the things that the characters deal with in White Lotus are sources of suffering and pain.

• 21:52Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it right there from my point of view that I've often thought about the fact that the greatest form of self-love or self-compassion is to see that there's no self at all. And yet, that can be so confusing for people because like they look in the mirror and they see a self and they build a resume, they make dentist appointments under their own name.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:18Dan Harris?

  It runs counter to lots of our intuitions.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  You have a social security number and

• 22:22Dan Harris?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Right. And your five senses and, right, it must add up to something. Well, I mean, and it does to some degree, obviously, it sort of does by default, like, I mean, you have, you're walking the earth and you have an impact, you have like a carbon footprint, you have your actions which impact other people. So there's some, there is some like individual agency by virtue of existing that cannot be like imagined away.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Even by a spiritual notion. And that part of life is what's most obvious to people because you're interacting with that part of yourself every day. And most of our ethics and stuff in fact relates to that, right? Because your agency, your moral agent, you're as a moral agent, you then are interacting with the world. And then that's where sort of like crime and punishment and ethics and behavior and so on come in. I feel like there's kind of like a roundabout. If you consider the like Buddhist notion of self, it can bring you back to those same kinds of ethics. Because, well, I think it's stated clearly somewhere, right? Like the basically the duty of life is to reduce suffering, yours and others.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  So that's kind of like the spiritual path to the same ethics of trying to, as a moral agent, be a positive force in the world or something. So I have thought about how these things relate before and a little bit. I mean, it's, it's kind of a paradox, but then in some ways also the paradox of it is, is the message. Right? Right? Because you have to be kind of constantly engaged with this thought, right?

• 24:05Dan Harris?

  Yes. Uh, well, two things I want to pick up on there that you said. One is it is true in my experience that if you can live a life where you are, and this is a very Buddhist idea, focused on benefiting all beings. That's Buddhist phraseology. You are definitionally reducing your reliance on the self because you are pulling your head out of your ass and focusing on other people.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  On others, right?

• 24:37Dan Harris?

  So that's, that's one kind of simple way to understand it. The other way to understand it that I think is really interesting, but can be, take a while to wrestle with, is this notion of paradox. And it's been really helpful for me. And it basically, the way it's described in Buddhism is that two things are true at the same time.

• 24:54Dan Harris?

  On one level, Josh Bearman is a human being talking to me right now from his car, by the way, uh, where he's recording this podcast. So.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Outside a frozen lake.

• 25:05Dan Harris?

  Not a non-negotiable fact, Josh Bearman exists. He writes, he, he talks into microphones, he drives, he does lots of stuff. Uh, he talks to his therapist, whatever. But at a fundamental level.

• 25:19Dan Harris?

  If you can't find any essence of Josh, if you close your eyes and look for some little humunculus of Josh Bearman behind your eyes, between your ears, you won't find him. And a rough analogy can be made to quantum physics. Like this chair I'm sitting in right now is a chair. But if we took a high powered microscope, it would be mostly empty space with spinning subatomic particles. And both of these things are true at the same time. And you can use this paradox as a kind of medicine, like when you're caught up in your own shit, you can recognize, oh yeah, well, there's no there there. Like this is all an illusion on some fundamental level.

• 26:02Dan Harris?

  Similarly, if you're too stuck in the mystical and floating off into the illusion and none of this matters. And, you know, one of the common pitfalls in Buddhism is nihilism. Well, actually, then to fall back on, no, no, this, to a certain extent, this is all real and it does matter. This paradox of mattering immensely and not at all. Or like T S Eliot, not a Buddhist, to my knowledge, talks about the injunction to care and not to care. And all of this, I think, is actually a great way to navigate life.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. I mean, that's in the, in the land of the lotus. It is a Tennyson poem. Part of the story is like, well, the sailors are like, well, it's great here. We've got the lotus. We don't have to, we don't have a care in the world, but it makes them nihilist, which I think was part of the joke of the calling the hotel, the White Lotus, because the lotus makes you not care about the world at all. But you lose the caring part of yourself. And it's kind of this like a retreat of comfort. I mean, that's what happens on the land of the lotus eaters. But yes, I like that idea of you have to care and not to care. And the duality, my father's a physicist, so I think about this all the time. And I Have, in fact, in my thinking about over the years, kind of like my worldview,

• 27:25Speaker 01

  it is, I hadn't really thought about this way, but I do think about this, that my sense of caring about the world is partly related to the fact that I also know that it's an accident and it's kind of like some lightning hit some nucleotides and made, you know, early life and the distance of the earth to the sun and, you know, like Planck's constant, if it was slightly different, none of this would be here. And, you know, like, if you go real deep, I mean, like, your microscopic examination of the chair, like, quickly the chair disappears, right? So I have thought about that in relation to life, about sort of, like, squaring a little bit, these, again, very cribbed

• 28:10Speaker 01

  understanding of physics from proximity to my father with my sense of moral purpose in the world. I mean, it's precisely because it's all kind of meaningless that therefore we are sort of giving it meaning by operating in the world in a mode with intent and purpose and with choice and with some kind of understanding. So that all, that too is a paradox, I guess, in the same mode.

• 28:38Dan Harris?

  Well said.

• 28:42Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Josh and I talk about the perils of pleasure-seeking and why it's actually okay to enjoy pleasure, but there are still perils. We'll talk about that after the break.

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• 30:04Dan Harris?

  Okay, here's the second theme that I've identified in my watching of season three of The White Lotus through the lens of amateur Buddhist. The second theme is the problem of desire. In one of my favorite scenes in the show, Tim Ratliff, who's just such an awesome character and so he's so well acted. He's having this, while on Valium or Ativan or whatever he's on, having this interaction with a Buddhist monk, played, I believe, by a Thai news anchor. He's asking the monk, like, what's this place all about? Why do people come here? And the monk says, I'm quoting, "Spiritual malaise. Lost connection with nature, with the family.

• 30:48Dan Harris?

  Lost connection with the spirit. What's left? The self, identity, chasing money, pleasure, yeah? Everyone runs from pain toward the pleasure. But when they get there, only to find more pain. You cannot outrun pain." To me, that was kind of like a, I know that identity as a prison is kind of the thesis statement of the, of the show, but in some ways, this was a mic drop to me. You cannot outrun your pain and we're papering over it with lattes and vacations and promotions and likes.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I also found, I mean, I found that scene, that's, that's when he kind of is, he's already sort of coming undone and then Victoria, right, his wife says, "Go in there and check it out," right? And then he sits in front of the. In front of the monk and basically has his mind blown, right? And then I think it's also is that the same part where he says death is a happy return? He kind of hears the message about letting go of life and the same encounter. Yeah, I thought it was very powerful and affecting. I love him in general. It's like, it's such a funny notion to take a character like that. And by virtue of this sudden unraveling of his station in life and therefore sense of self.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And on this kind of like half baked vacation, indulging his daughter's loose college interest in in Buddhism. That then he is the one who sits down there. Piper, of course, as we discovered later, is not prepared for any of this at all and isn't really that serious about it. She's listening, she's trying really hard, she's a good college student, she's not getting it. Tim gets it immediately when he's sitting there and he's suddenly asked to, because he's in a state of vulnerability where he is like, it's like the, you know, the shell is off and he has to consider himself. And so the message lands very hard with him. And then for in the audience, at least for me, I felt a very, I felt a, I, I, I had a, you know, goosebumps basically. Cause it's, it's so powerful.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  It's also like, it's so simple, the idea is so simple. Like, it's like, and which is also why I kind of liked having it in my case in therapy. Cause like, I just have to hear it over and over and over again. It is very simple if you can put into practice, but you kind of do have to, you know, be reminded of this message. It's so easy to stray. Although I think in Tim's case, I don't know, he's, he's not going to come back a Buddhist or anything, but whatever, like release of his self happens there because of his financial troubles or legal troubles. Like when he goes home, he's going to be a different person. I don't even know if he escaped a prison, he's like forced out of the prison by circumstances.

• 33:30Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 33:32Dan Harris?

  The word that kept coming up for me as I watched Tim's arc. This is a word that often is used in the pejorative in our culture, but it's used in a positive way in Buddhism. Disillusionment or disenchantment.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 33:45Dan Harris?

  That we are waking up from the illusion, waking up from the spell, the lie that we tell ourselves, which is. Yeah, the, the next achievement, the next acquisition, the, you know, the next sexual encounter is finally going to do it for me. But of course it, it never does. You watch him realize that in a, you know, and it's choppy and also he's sedated. He makes lots of mistakes along the way, including almost killing his whole family, et cetera, et cetera. But that process is, is kind of fun to watch play out. The other character who really embodies this. This idea of desire as like a losing strategy is Frank, Sam Rockwell.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 34:29Dan Harris?

  It may be the best soliloquy on television in a long time. Where he's sitting across from Walt Goggins in a bar in Bangkok. And he talks about this insatiable desire. He's got to bed young Thai women so much so that he, he's so deep into this addiction that he eventually decides he wants to merge with the object of his desire and become a Thai woman. But of course that, even that won't do it for him. And again, it just kind of a hilarious, ridiculous, so well delivered, both as in, in terms of the writing and the acting. Example of what a dead end chasing pleasure is.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think like everybody, even, even people who are sort of critical to show or don't like aspects of the ending. Are appropriately sort of awestruck by that soliloquy. I think it's interesting, well written, comes as a shock, it's a surprise. It's like the last thing you'd imagine where like Rick, who's clearly into some, has had some weird business in his life. Has this like, you know, friend who lives in Bangkok can get him a gun. So whatever that, what kind of guy is that going to be? Then he shows up, he's like, oh yeah, how you been? You know, everybody's had that, I haven't seen you in a while. Oh, you're sober now. Okay, you kind of know where that's going. And then like boom, there's the rest of that is not something that anybody want to see, would have seen coming.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  And I was thinking about it, and of course, you know, it's kind of brilliant in the sense of how it delivers on the leitmotive of identity as a prison. Because it is about somebody escaping their identity or reassessing their identity or under like a broadening with a multiplicity of identities. Right? In terms of seeking, because he's lost and trying to fill the void. So it is a mode of seeking. And then the carnality of the sexual stratum on which this discovery is taking place is a mode of seeking. And we've seen that before, people that are like, oh, I can fill the hole with sex.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  But then to sort of transcend that around the idea of sex and embedded in a kaleidoscopic identity. To me, that was like, that was a new concept. I was like, that's the, I don't think I'd ever really heard that before. It's one of the many ways that sort of the show delivers on this premise that we see at the very beginning with the monks' words about identity being a prison.

• 37:04Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well said. Yeah, so in that scene, we're hitting two themes, not only the one of around identity, but also the one around desire and, and the disutility of pleasure.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Well, and it combines these cliches too of Thailand of like a place of sort of, you know, wanton, you know, sexual tourism and Buddhist self-discovery. Right?

• 37:28Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Which are at odds normally, right? These are two different places. It's one place, but there's two different experiences of it. People are there for one reason or the other, usually Frank somehow has, has brought them together.

• 37:42Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 37:45Dan Harris?

  Hilariously, with a lot of pathos. Let me just go briefly into teacher mode for a second and say a few things about desire.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna hear.

• 37:55Dan Harris?

  In the hopes of being helpful and, and you can respond or not. First of all, I just wanna point out that a lot of people, when the subject comes up, they worry like, are the Buddhists saying like, no pleasure is kosher? Enjoying your meal is great. Enjoying having sex is great. The, the mistake is not to enjoy pleasure. The mistake is to think that pleasure is a strategy for true fulfillment. The Buddha used this analogy that he likened it to licking honey off the edge of a razor. So there's some pleasure to be had there, but there's a lot of danger in it because

• 38:39Dan Harris?

  nothing lasts. So you're just chasing the dragon. And so I, I was thinking a little bit of like, what, what could I say that would be useful for people about this? And I had these two little ideas, both from my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein. One is a great expression that he took from another Buddhist teacher. He said, he, I'm always stealing from Joseph and he always points out that we're part of a lineage of thieves. So the expression that Joseph's teacher used was lust cracks the brain. And I think that's a great little phrase to drop into your mind when you're in the throes of desire, potentially leading you to a disastrous decision.

• 39:24Dan Harris?

  And then the other little meditative technique that Joseph talks about is to use mindfulness, to use self-awareness to investigate. You know, if you notice that you want something, could be large or small, just sit with it for a second and watch the desire come and go. Because everything is impermanent, the desire will crest and eventually will go. And if you sit with it patiently enough, freedom is on the other side because it will go away and you will see, I don't need to be. A marionette on the noxious, you know, puppeteer of of ego and desire. I'm yammering a lot, but does any of that make sense to you?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. I mean, again, that's I find these ideas to be powerful and their simplicity. My therapist would talk about emotions in general, so not just desire. But so applying this to her, this this would come up at a time in other contexts, but I could see it also in relationship to desire. But she was for talking about these things as the wind in the trees, right?

• 40:37Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Wind comes and blows the branches around and the boughs bend and, you know, and then it goes away and then comes from the other direction or whatever. And so you have to sort of like take some satisfaction or have some faith in the tree, basically, right? And let the wind kind of like run through it and like it'll be there when the wind has gone. Context is a little bit different, but I could I'm seeing the same notion, right? If you like applying it to this idea of sitting with your desire and letting it pass, that's like the wind in the trees and it'll nothing is permanent and everything changes. And that's interesting, though, now I'm trying to think about, I'm trying to resolve this in my head because in her analogy, it's like

• 41:21Speaker 01

  you're the tree, but that's relying on this idea of the self. But probably if we got deeper into it, it would be like the tree isn't like you, the self. It's kind of like your values and behaviors and and engagements with other people in the world. And, you know, there would be like a she would have had a Buddhist definition of what the roots of that tree are.

• 41:44Dan Harris?

  Well, I actually, and again, I'm going to remind everybody that I'm not a Buddhist scholar. But to me, the idea of self as tree strikes me as okay, because the core assertion here is that the self, it's all nature. And there is nothing in nature that is independent and disconnected. The tree has roots in the ground, is feeding off of water and all sorts of minerals, and is exposed to impersonal forces like the wind. And if you think about all of your internal processes, like meteorological phenomena,

• 42:28Dan Harris?

  like nature, they become much more workable. And that's the, that's one way out of the prison of identity.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I like this. This I'm learning here. This is helpful. This is actually great. My therapist retired a couple of years ago and I've been all right. But definitely, it's like I thought it sounds, oh, I wish I could just call her out of the blue. But so it's like my processing of these ideas in relation to my, the world that I'm living in, kind of stopped a couple of years ago. So this is like, I enjoy talking about it.

• 43:03Dan Harris?

  Well, it's unlicensed therapy. My qualification is I slept at a Holiday Inn last night, so it's perfect.

• 43:13Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Josh and I talk about our craving for certainty as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. We talk about the importance of repetition, the Buddhist concept of attachment, and the three jewels of Buddhism and the importance of relationships.

• 43:31Speaker 03

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• 44:34Dan Harris?

  We are, and this is not a complaint, this is an observation, spending a lot of time on these, which I think is perfectly reasonable. So instead of doing seven themes, I'm going to do four. I'll hit two more before I let you go.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Okay, sure.

• 44:48Dan Harris?

  One of them you already helpfully teed up. The idea that life lacks clear closure and resolutions, which I think is another way of talking about our desire for certainty as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. Let me read the exact words from Mike White's monk and then let you hold forth on the other side. Here's the quote. "Sometimes we wake with anxiety and edgy energy. What will happen today? What is in store for me? So many questions. We want resolution, solid earth under our feet. So we take life under our own hands. We take action, yeah? Our solutions are temporary. They are quick fix. They create more anxiety, more suffering. There's no resolution to life's questions.

• 45:33Dan Harris?

  It's easier to be patient once we finally accept there's no resolution."

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:39Dan Harris?

  What do you make of that?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's in the final episode, right? And again, I think it's kind of like an incredible irony that this is, it's coming at the finale in which... Some of the stories do resolve tragically, of course, and then, but the other ones that don't resolve in that direction, and by the way, the one that resolves tragically is because of the character Rick's inability to escape the prison of his identity, right? And his life has been deformed by this need for revenge, or his belief that his entire identity is built around this one idea, and it becomes too powerful. He kind of thinks

• 46:23Speaker 01

  he faces it down, and then he can't ultimately. And so that story kind of partly resolves, although if you believe Chelsea, then they're gonna keep at it in the afterlife. And then the other ones that don't resolve, I mean, there's something happens and there's an ending and they leave and they're gonna, but they're gonna face the world now in a different way, particularly with the rat lips. And then also with the three women, there's a kind of like rhetorical incantation that Lori offers at the end when she's like, well, I don't, you know, like, time is what gives us all meaning, right? She kind of has this other whole view, which is just a little bit of a stealth emotional story all the

• 47:06Speaker 01

  way. Everybody, of course, likes watching those characters. Those seem very, those characters seem like the most recognizable because they're people that we sort of feel familiar with in our everyday lives. But what happens at the end of that is probably to me, the most affecting and was surprising. And so that too is not really a resolution. And so I kind of, I loved that people are like, kind of obsessing about who gets killed and what happens in the finale and who's the body and all these like, you know, sort of online Reddit forum theories about how the story resolves. And Mike, basically via the monk says, well, the resolution is not the point. And in fact, wanting a resolution... Is what keeps you suffering. So I found I found them to be powerful.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I have the same I myself in my life. I I found those words. I remember hearing them when I was like, oh, yeah, right. Again, like, it's just so simple. It's like every day I do think like, what's gonna happen today? Am I gonna solve the problems I didn't solve yesterday? And I always fool myself every day. I'm like, it's gonna be today's the day we're just gonna all come together. I mean, literally probably think that every single day. Uh, I try to persuade myself not to, but it's very challenging. And um, and so I like being reminded of it. I liked being reminded of it in the show.

• 48:24Dan Harris?

  Yeah, just to go back into teacher mode for a second. The uh, the word mindfulness, which is very much associated with Buddhism. That's the word we use in English, but in the ancient language of Pali, in which the Buddhist teachings were written down. The word is sati, S A T I. There are many ways to translate it. But it is often translated as remembering or recollecting. And so you've said several times in the course of this conversation, it's so simple, but I keep forgetting.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 48:54Dan Harris?

  But repetition is, there's a reason people like me repeat the same shit over and over again and learn to do so from my teachers. Is that we're programmed for denial of these basic facts? And we need to be woken up over and over and over again. You know, and particularly on this point, because we're, you know, essentially the descendants of nervous monkeys. You know, and we we started as prey animals and somehow got to the top of the food chain. But we we we are really anxious. And one way we try to fend that off is to look for closure, look for happy endings, but that

• 49:39Dan Harris?

  and to look for certainty. But that puts you at war with the universe and actually drives you further into your identity. Because you're you're an isolated ego peering fretfully out from your eye sockets, trying to manipulate a hostile world when when in fact, you're actually part of nature and can you relax into the flow? And again, when I say all this, I know that some people are thinking, well, is this a recipe for resignation or passivity? And Just to be super practical about it, it's not, the Buddha himself was quite an ambitious dude. He built a large body of monks and nuns and raised a bunch of money to do so from wealthy merchants

• 50:19Dan Harris?

  and kings and laid out this huge body of teachings. He was, he was doing shit in the world. And so can we. Yeah, he had ambition and so can we. But the key Buddhist add-on is not being attached to the results. Understanding that you can do what you can do from your limited position, but you're, you're interconnected with the, an entropic fluxing universe and it's out of your control. Once you finish writing your screenplay, once Mike finishes writing and directing this season three, he can't control what they say on Reddit. And so that's a way to kind of have your cake and eat it too, to use an inappropriate metaphor

• 51:02Dan Harris?

  here, or you know, the idea of non-attachment to results.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, I like talking and thinking about all this stuff. I remember, this is a slight digression. I remember seeing Kundun in the theater.

• 51:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Martin Scorsese movie about the childhood of the Dalai Lama, when he would sort of like make, you know, every other movie was gangsters or like Last Temptation of Christ and then Kundun, you know, like there were these odd choices in there, even still, then he made Silence, right? Which I didn't see, but I remember watching it and just thinking, huh, is that like, really the way they talk? Like, because we have via cultural receipt of Buddhist culture or Eastern ideas sort of been filtered through, you know, mulk, many generationally

• 52:04Speaker 01

  derivative kind of, you know, cultural representation. So I just figured that the words that we understood were kind of some kind of cliche, that it's so simple. And then, and so then when you encounter them and in practice, it sounds like silly at first because it's so simple. And I was like, really? That's it? That was my first time really thinking about it. Then years later, I met.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  The woman who wrote Kundun and she had spent a lot of time with the Dalai Lama, kind of researching the movie and writing this whole story. And I asked her that same question. This is before my therapy or anything. And she said, yeah, that was. She's actually the person who later referred me to my Buddhist nun therapist. She had met him, rough time in her life. Somehow she was kind of a fancy person who would somehow encounter the Dalai Lama. They spent time together and she decided to write this movie and then got my script. So he's gonna make it. She said, by the way, he liked it because it was a boys' club. I said, really? That's interesting. And it's not how I would have thought about the temple palace. And she said the same thing. I said, is it, is it really that simple? Because sometimes it seems like it's basically like it's a trafficking and some kind of like eastern cliche. And she was like, no, that's kind of the beauty of it.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  And I feel like I'm talking about it now and encountering it on the show a little bit more, talking about it now, because it's pretty sprinkled throughout the show. But since you're much more versed in it and can elevate these themes, I'm realizing again, like, oh, these ideas are profound and they can be very useful if you pay attention and allow yourself to be reminded.

• 53:36Dan Harris?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just key in on that word useful. The ideas are designed to be useful. They're designed to reduce suffering. And Buddhists can get incredibly esoteric and complex and, you know, lots of arguments over what the nature of consciousness and enlightenment is. And there, there's lots of not simple stuff in there. But when you whittle it down to its essence, you know, several teachers have been asked, you know, like, what's the core of the Dharma? One answer is, everything changes. Another is, are you sure? Like, it's very simple stuff that you could tattoo on your wrist as a like compass for navigating life.

• 54:20Dan Harris?

  And they're, they're not designed to be like knit on throw pillows and never looked at again. But that's part of what's happened is that they've become cliches. And as a result of rote repetition, they've been ground down into meaninglessness. But if you actually wrestle with them in a real way and try to like use them as, as like I said, a compass, they're really fucking helpful.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Coming back to the show, I feel like in particular, the transformation, which entails an escape from identity, that was maybe the most.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Surprising for sure. And then also impactful, I think this is slightly neglected, is Saxon Ratliff's son, because he starts off like on the boat, he's wearing glasses, you know, on his way in, wearing sunglasses, like, I don't want to see anything, right? And then, by the way, by the time he's leaving on the boat, he's reading the book that Chelsea's given him. And in response to their whole mission, which is to allow Piper to kind of go see her dumb monster, he says like, oh, Buddhism is for people who don't want to try, basically. So he, and he's responding to that cliched idea of you just sit on the in the lotus position with your thumb up your ass, which is funny. And then,

• 55:36Speaker 01

  then he reveals to his father at a certain point, once, once he gets it, he can, he has a whiff of something's going on with his dad and there's trouble in their life back home. He kind of confronts him, he's like, if something's going wrong, you need to let me know because this is my intended identity. I don't have anything else. There's nothing else there. So then, he realizes this whole time that Chelsea, with all of her sort of, hmm, you know, friendly mysticism, which he doesn't take seriously. Once he realizes that the identity, that the identity that he's placed so much faith in might be challenged, and then there's nothing to replace it, he's then suddenly available

• 56:21Speaker 01

  then to Chelsea to kind of receive the message. And I actually think the duality between him and Rick is very interesting because Rick, they're both empty vessels. Rick is empty because he had the lid is closed. He refuses to let anything in. And then Saxon was empty the whole time. And then he kind of takes the lid off and he's like, uh huh, okay. Well, yeah, Philip, I'm ready for my vessel to be filled. And then he's so genuinely sad when.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  He realizes that the only person that has seen him at all, basically is a person is this Chelsea, but her life is bound up with this other person who then he comes back from this Thai trip in the last episode in the morning. They see each other and have this like lens flare reunion on the beach and Saxons, they're looking sort of forlorn and realizes like, oh, he's gonna have to go do this on his own. And on the way back on the boat at the end, he's reading the book that she gave him. That escape from identity and transformation and relationship to these ideas, I think was was maybe the most kind of clear and in that way, maybe the most profound.

• 57:26Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I'm picking up what you're putting down and it's another example of disenchantment, disillusionment. And he, he walks onto the scene as I think you and Gia on the show described him as the embodiment of pure American male id. Like, he literally is the antithesis of Eastern philosophy. Everything Buddhism is not. In a really believable, not, you know, not overnight transformation way, he's still just at the beginning, but just to see the aperture open for him slightly is very interesting.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  That's how Mike described it too. I think Patrick was saying, I think when I talked to him about it, he was saying, Mike was like, well, he's not, you know, an instant convert and suddenly is, you know, enlightened. He's just getting started, which is kind of encouraging and really pleasant to, to see.

• 58:23Dan Harris?

  Okay, I'm gonna hit the fourth and final.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:26Dan Harris?

  Even though I had all these ambitions. See, this is not attachment to results. I'm not going to be attached to my, my plan that I came into this conversation with, but there's a lot to talk about. So the fourth, the fourth theme that we'll hit, even though I had, you know, done all of my homework and come up with seven, is the Buddhist term of art is sangha, which translates into community. Another way to say it is just the importance of your relationships to other people. And you talked about this a little bit, but I'll, I'll go back to the moment that for me is among the top three or four moments in the show, which is when Lori, played by Carey Coons, who's amazing, cries and says to her friends, who at times seem like frenemies, but.

• 59:10Dan Harris?

  In this moment, it becomes clear they're real friends, Jaclyn and Kate. She says, and I'm quoting, "I'm glad you, Jaclyn, have a beautiful face and I'm glad you, Kate, have a beautiful life and I'm just happy to be at the table." And first of all, this is a real moment. You know, these, these guys have been passive aggressive in their cattiness and inauthenticity for much of the show and their relationships to one another. But here, like, there is no mask. She's not performing. She's genuinely sad and also genuinely loving. And like, I think this is a great example of the fact that it is possible to get your head out of your ass, to get over yourself, to connect to other people, to break out of the prison.

• 59:53Dan Harris?

  And, you know, like, taking it back to Saxon, like, Saxon is the embodiment also of a trend I see in American culture in a big way, especially among men. And, and this is something I've embodied myself, which is like this optimizer thing. I'm gonna work out, I'm gonna take the right smoothie, I'm gonna, whatever, track my steps, count my calories, monitor my sleep. But the data show very clearly that if you want to optimize for one thing, the one thing that matters the most when it comes to our health and longevity is the quality of our relationships. It is the most important thing. And, and it was in, in the Dharma, in Buddhism, you know, the Buddha talks about three jewels.

• 1:00:37Dan Harris?

  The Buddha, which is a kind of immodest thing to say, but, you know, he's just holding himself up as the avatar of awakening, the possibility of change. The Dharma, which is the teachings of the Buddha. And then the Sangha, the community, that there's this power of doing this work in the HOV lane. And it wasn't like two jewels and then an asterisk. It was three jewels. They were all like equally important. And in our individualistic age, we really overlook this. And so, to me, that moment... Highlighted in a show that's often about dysfunctional relationships. It highlighted a moment of like highly functioning relationship and how additive and essential that is for the human animal.

• 1:01:22Dan Harris?

  Okay, now, again, I spoke too much, but I'll see if you have anything to say.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  No, I mean, that's an interesting thought because I had in relation to Laurie's also affecting soliloquially, I feel like Frank's and hers are the standout specific moments in the show. I felt very affected by that speech to her friends because it was surprise. I mean, it was sort of, you'd think it would be, well, it's like kind of easy for three friends who grew up together, but have kind of, you know, lived different lives and think that they're gonna go on this fun trip and come back together and then realize like, ah, we're kind of just different now. And life goes on and things are, you know, not the same anymore.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And Laurie is the one who is holding on to this, the resentment that could sort of basically break up the friendship and she overcomes it. So the reason why it's interesting, the way that you're bringing it up in relation to Buddhism is that she says, I don't have a religion. This is not a spiritual. Her speech is, in the text, is a spiritual. She says, I don't have a belief system, is what she says, right? And I thought it was work. That didn't work. Oh, then she says, like, I thought motherhood, I mean, that was like a killer when she's like, when she admits that motherhood didn't make her happy. I mean, that's, that was kind of an astonishing moment, too.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  And then she kind of moves, and she's like, I went through all these things. None of those things. Answered the question for me and then then she kind of says, well, for me, it's time. Time gives us meaning. We spent all this time together and just doing for this long. Being in this circle of friendship is what matters. And I thought it was kind of meant as, I mean, it's meant to be affecting, but I thought also there was like the subtext of, well, if you were paying attention at the beginning, she says, I don't have a belief system. So it's kind of anti spiritual set against throwing kind of a stronger shadow against the backdrop, which is all explicitly spiritual.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  But it's interesting that in some way it's nevertheless demonstrates these same ideas because for her to do that means she's shedding the part of herself that was holding on to this resentment.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  And realizing that that's not what is important and that was only causing suffering. And like, yeah, sure. She could have like, put on a happy face for the final day and then they all go their separate ways. They probably wouldn't see each other for five years and then they would really drift apart. But she does the opposite and does something actually again, like quite simple. Her articulation is also very simple and brings them closer together. I mean, I think the fact, the last thing you see with them, well, I guess maybe they're on the boat too, but the last thing before then, before the, you know, final whole conclusion is like, they're sort of giggling together on the like lovely outdoor couches in their fetching thousand dollar night villa. And they've returned to the girls that they were growing up, right?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  It's just like that simple gesture, very generous gesture. But as you say, it comes from Lori overcoming something in herself.

• 1:04:47Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, she says she doesn't have a belief system, but one way to think about spirituality in a, in a non metaphysical way is just anything that. Is beyond your limited small self.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Right. Well, mainly it's kind of a funny. I mean, I'm sure Mike has thought about every single aspect. It would. It's also kind of funny that like Lori, she might say she's not having a belief system. Okay, she doesn't have a belief system, but her action is in accordance with the belief system that all these people are there to interact with, actually, right? So she was not there for that at all, but yet she kind of arrives there.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Anyhow, and it's not explained. We don't know really what she was thinking about or how that happened. But that's kind of a, that's a funny little irony, actually.

• 1:05:42Dan Harris?

  Well, that's why for me as a secular person, you know, I mean, I am a Buddhist, but I don't mean it in a religious sense. Like, I don't view Buddhism as a belief system. It can be, for sure, practiced that way. But I view it as just like the truth, but low, small T. It's just.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yes, this is like me. Yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:06:02Dan Harris?

  This is just a description of nature. And so you don't have to have a belief system to stumble upon like the truth.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  No, that's a good. I mean, that's how I feel too. I mean, my therapist would every so often reveal that like she believes in ghosts and all this stuff. And I just like, oh, wow, that's a whole different. She's like, yeah, that stuff's in there too. Like, okay, that might not be for me, but it speaks to the applicability of the ideas. You don't, it doesn't actually need to be a religion in the kind of classical sense. It can be a set of practices and ideas.

• 1:06:34Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  About yourself in the world. And that's what Lori offers.

• 1:06:39Dan Harris?

  Our mutual friend Zev Barrow, who's been on the show, describes it as a diet in a way. It's like, or as I've sometimes heard Buddhism described, it's not something to believe in. It's something to do. That really lands for me. Before I let you go, just for the record and to just show off, I want to just list, for those who are curious, the other three themes that we didn't get a chance to talk about.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Okay, sure.

• 1:07:02Dan Harris?

  One is. The theme of violence as a result of like an inability to sit with your own pain. I think Rick really is a great example of that. In The Monk, really talks about, you know, the only good faith response is is to sit with your feelings. And and that is the radical move of of Buddhism of mindfulness, which is instead of reacting blindly to every neurotic impulse. Like you just sit with it. They sit with it in a in a very specific way, like kind of an open, accepting, warm way, curious, interested way. And that's one of the main thrusts of mindfulness meditation.

• 1:07:41Dan Harris?

  The other theme that we didn't get a chance to talk about, but is huge is, I guess you could call it karma, but like more like choices and consequences. Everybody in the show is making these choices. And in the finale, you know, we see a lot of disappointing choices with Belinda doing to Porin Chi. What had been done to her and and season one and and Guy Talk subverting his own Buddhist belief system to shoot a guy in the back as he's walking away. In order to get the girl. And anyway, that that seems to be, you know, karma is a huge Buddhist idea. And it's often caricatured in culture, like, you know, karma is a bitch, or what comes around goes around, or karma, police arrest this man or whatever. But it's it's really much simpler than that. It's not like a universal system of justice.

• 1:08:25Dan Harris?

  It's just that actions have consequences and it's just the law of cause and effect. So I'm left imagining that Belinda and Guy Talk, you know, there will be consequences for them. That will be unpredictable for going against their own belief system. And then the final thing is a quick thing, but in Buddhism, there's this idea of right speech. That you we should say what is true, what is useful, and at the right time and with the right intention. And the girls, the the women, the blonde women, who are the three friends, you could see them shit talking. And then it kind of feels like they want to take a bath in Purell afterwards.

• 1:09:05Dan Harris?

  It's like the the consequences are unpleasant and none of them is happy with the constant gossiping and backbiting. So yeah, those are the three themes we didn't get to, but I just thought I'd say them out loud.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot in there. We could do a lightning round on the final three. It's the nice thing about the show that it is this ensemble character drama, which is just kind of an unusual mode of current popular entertainment, right? So that allows for people to observe people's behavior and actions, right? And talk about it around the figurative water cooler. I mean, I've, you know, I've been talking to Dave Burnett is the executive producer of the show. And he's like, ah, you know, he's like, I'm trying not to read all the stuff about the, you know, finales, people that might are pissed off about it or whatever. And I was like, well, but you've got the whole country being engaged in an observation,

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  like a fine microscopic observation and read on human behavior, which itself is like a mitzvah. Right? So it's kind of this incredible thing, even though people are like, ah, I wish that this happened. That's just, the story is like reflecting back into people's ideas. And then if you come to it with these ideas, again, speaking to the applicability of Buddhism. In this case, it's obviously like Mike intends a lot of it. But even so, you know, this lens is useful in many scenarios. And I feel like it's got a lot to say about even the aspects of this that are not explicitly Buddhist or spiritual at all. Yeah, it's been fun to think about. And like I say, I still, even though Mike, even though Mike himself disagrees, I think season one is a Buddhist allegory.

• 1:10:48Dan Harris?

  I'm on your side.

• 1:10:51Dan Harris?

  I just want to say in closing, I've loved listening to your podcast. I've loved meeting you. It's been so fun to obsess about the show along with the rest of the world. But then to get to nerd out with you, who I've never met before, but such an immediately fun and interesting and engaging conversation partner. And also extra credit for doing this from your car at an inconvenient time at the last minute. So Josh Bearman, many thanks to you.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It was really fun. And I look forward to listening to it once it's all put together.

• 1:11:31Dan Harris?

  I just want to thank Josh Bearman again. Go check out his podcast, The White Lotus Official Season Three Podcast. He and his co-host Gia do a great job on that show. Don't forget to check out danharris.com where you can get ad-free versions of this podcast. And you can also get twice monthly live guided meditations from me, which also include Q and A. And you get the ability to chat with me and members of my staff and comment on the thrice weekly emails I send out. Lots of stuff going on over there. Please check it out. And I also am going to drop in the show notes, some links to episodes that are relevant to this one. Natasha Rothwell, who plays Belinda on the show, she came on this show. She's a friend.

• 1:12:15Dan Harris?

  So I'm going to drop a link to that. Also a link to my interview with Michael Imperioli, who was one of the stars of season two. And we did reference Pema Chodron. So I'm going to drop my two interviews with her into the show notes. And finally, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. Again, big thanks to Marissa for hustling this episode into the feed so quickly. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme.

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